May 2017, Crips in Space Guest Editors' Note by Alice Wong and Sam De Leve Greetings, Corpore

1 The Deaf Poets Society, Issue 4: May 2017, Crips in Space Guest Editors’ Note by Alice Wong and Sam de Leve Greetings, corporeal crips and non-crips: As guest editors for this special issue of The Deaf Poets Society, we are excited and honored to share the brilliant creations and perspectives offered by contributors to this issue. Crips in Space was conjured by a mundane activity: Sam had reconceptualized their movement on wheels as an analogue to movement in zero-gravity, which in turn sparked speculation about the ways in which crips are particularly suited to life in space. Their tweet about #CripsInSpace went viral when Alice amplified it and encouraged community input. The outpouring of interest from dozens upon dozens of people serves to highlight not only our enduring fascination as a species with space, but also how strongly speculation about the future resonates with d/Deaf and disabled people in particular. As more and more people suggested artmaking around this theme, Alice proposed a collaboration with The Deaf Poets Society. The expertise and interest of The Deaf Poets Society and its editors allowed the burgeoning 2 idea of Crips in Space to come to life here in this issue. We are filled with gratitude for this opportunity and partnership. While space may exist in a vacuum, the idea of Crips in Space did not come from a cultural vacuum: indeed, it can trace its roots to a long history within speculative fiction and within the d/Deaf and disability community. Despite the erasure or diminishment of d/Deafness and disability in major touchstone media, it is far from absent. Disability and d/Deafness, acknowledged or not, are present in stories from independent authors and publishers, all the way up to blockbuster media like Star Wars. Whether they #SayTheWord or not, there have always been stories about crips in space--and our presence in those stories underscores the underlying truth that d/Deafness and disability are and will always be a fundamental part of human existence. By sharing these stories, poems, essays, and art, we offer a sample of visions that illustrate that existence. We hope that this issue will provoke further discussion, creation, and imagination. Space truly is the final frontier and our ingenious community of pioneers are prepared to explore it. 3 POETRY SECTION: “POETRY PARTICLES” Jay Besemer Definition it’s the nighttime of the blood. moment by moment the cells stack up & tethers make fast & everything manages. when the tissues collide with stone & bark with wind & silk contraband of purpose evidence accumulates like crusts of bread on café tables the body changes begins to erupt 4 codes in motion slow storm of particles all shifting state. fractures open, heal. metabolic swarm astonished in love: definition of a living thing. 5 Geological Time once my body was a fall of rocks onto a highway cut through a bank of hills. now it is the dominion of practical stains. with enough time, i can learn from this earth, the parts of it that i know. the parts of my body that heave, glisten, spurt. the ruby, the moonstone. geological time in a biological entity: how little logic enters into it. 6 Possible Forms I. the real gives way to static & we stretch into it, make a trellis-thing & call it increase. noise is full of information, & the mass of information bends space/time around our pylons. now, bodies. bodies that radiate in the shift of want. we have bodies 7 that want. we have that want. as the breath gives way to panic we shrink into it, recede into a kernel & carry this in a pocket. dying stars do not move like we do. learn how in the cosmos the loss & the gain are one. learn how in the cosmos failure does not exist 8 & what exists does so unapologetically. there is no weariness. only heat death. yearning for deep space is yearning for paradise for some great mouth to smile & thank us in words we can remember & carry home for display. earn the affirmation of the everything without betrayal. it isn’t what we think. II. 9 carbon has no gender. likewise hydrogen. wait for some clue to possible forms. behavior is this matrix— what is done becomes what we seem becomes what we are like weather we are outside the selves the shelter holding energies together the shell of question & answer 10 me & you— what if the measure itself is flawed what if it isn’t human but person we mean we try (& fail) to be or see what if this place is also person o ignorant stain o face in the dark windowpane the hole in your eye so crowded 11 Jay Besemer is a poet, performer, artist and editor whose books and chapbooks include the forthcoming Crybaby City (Spuyten Duyvil), Telephone, Chelate (both Brooklyn Arts Press), A New Territory Sought (Moria), Aster to Daylily (Damask Press) and Object with Man’s Face (Rain Taxi Ohm Editions). He is a finalist for the 2017 Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature. Jay is a contributing editor with The Operating System. Look for him on Twitter @divinetailor and on Tumblr http://jaybesemer.tumblr.com. 12 Marlena Chertock On that one-way trip to Mars If I didn’t have a bone disorder I would go to Mars and never come back. I would go to Mars, send an application to NASA, tell them my coding is so-so, I’ve never peered into a robot’s circuitry but I’d like to learn how. I would go to Mars, someone who has to look and write and revise to understand. Someone who believes there’s other life out there, not because of scientific proof or a god told me, but because I want humanity to feel less lonely. I would go to Mars and send back news of the Sols. I’d create the first Martian newspaper, publish 13 the first book of Martian poetry, paint the Martian soil with my words. I would go to Mars if I wasn’t too short for NASA’s height restrictions. I’d tell them you can fit more short people into a rocket. Don’t worry about my bone deterioration rate, I had arthritis at 13. Walked like an old lady at 20. It’d be nice to float and give my bones a break. I would go to Mars if I didn’t have bones clicking against each other, if I was a jellified blob. If the genetic letters within me didn’t spell out feeble, different, unfit for space travel. "On that one-way trip to mars" originally appeared in Crab Fat Magazine. 14 Application to NASA Even if all the pain I’ve felt in my whole life doesn’t equal the pressure an astronaut experiences in G-forces on reentry, even if the fact that I’ve been staring up since I was born — at people and the stars — isn’t enough, even if I was born with arthritis, cushioning between my bones faulty, even though I’m beneath your stated height restrictions, I was shorter than every water slide and roller coaster I’ve ridden on too, even when my lower left back feels like it’s been hollowed out with a jagged spoon, even through the spreading unfeeling, numbness from my butt to my toes, even if my room at 10 and 25 shines with green glow-in-the-dark stick-on stars, even when sneezing feels like I’ll push 15 my spine out of alignment, still I’m strong. I may be one of the strongest candidates you’ve ever had. "Application to NASA" originally appeared in Noble/Gas Quarterly. Moon, or no moon excerpts from GQ, 2014 Buzz Aldrin was burdened. His grandfather shot a bullet into his brain. His mom swallowed pills a year before he took off from Earth. Moon or no moon, suicide was in his blood, “a genetic association.” He had a mental breakdown after returning from the moon. He drank, divorced, went to the psych ward, was broke. Like a new moon on a cold night in February, frost crunching under his boots. Melancholy ran in the Moon side of his family, his mother’s maiden name Moon. When he climbed down the ladder and first saw the moon, spread out, really in front of him, he called it “magnificent desolation.” 16 The martian comes to me while I’m waiting for the Metro. It’s late again, and she says she wishes she could use her spaceship in the city — no-fly zones or something. The martian is on a mission to learn about all forms of transportation. She’s always on the go. She loved the subways in Paris. Underground, a familiar sense of being lost. In Chile, she took a 12-hour bus ride, tried to sleep in the non-reclining seat. German submarines do wacky things to the martian’s ear canals. When she gets back on land it takes weeks for her hearing to rise back like bubbles. American airplanes are where the martian feels most at home. She doesn’t love having someone else pilot, but at least the turbulence of flight is back in her body. 17 "The martian comes to me" originally appeared in Calamus Journal. 18 A speck of pain in the immense black. A whimpering fleck of dust in endless starlight what does it mean to ache always. Will someone, some life form understand me, a speck, one tiny part of one race on one small planet in our small solar system in the vast galaxy.

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